Michael Fortune

Michael Fortune is many things to many people. Some people know him as an artist and filmmaker, more as an educator, more as a collector of folklore and more as a lover of traditional song.

In the late 1990s, he picked up a video camera and began collecting stories and accounts in daycare centres, halls, schools and private homes around the country and shared them back to the communities from which they came. At the core of his practice are people, and his genuine connection and engagement, plus his inquisitive mind, results in uniquely rich and personal and often unrecorded material. The intimate nature of the relationships with the people and circumstances he encounters, and the subsequent reflective treatment of the material at hand, is a key feature of Fortune’s work.

Growing up in an area rich in folklore and belief has awarded Michael a natural understanding of the crossover between traditional and contemporary beliefs and customs, and the fluid borders where fact and fiction meet. As a result, he has been commissioned to undertake multiple folklore collections, oral history programmes, mapping projects and project work throughout Ireland over the past twenty years, and he has worked on and curated shows with the National Museum (Country Life), the National Library of Ireland, the Irish Traditional Music Archive and a host of local museums, libraries and institutions around the country. His work also brings him into classrooms all over the country at Primary, Secondary and Third Level and for the past 10 years he has worked at Limerick School of Art and Design on the MA in Art and Design Teacher Education programme.

He also contributes articles and features to various national papers such as The Journal, RTÉ Culture and Irish Central, RTÉ Television and Radio and also BBC Radio.

He continues to live in his native Wexford, at the foot of Mount Leinster, with his partner Aileen Lambert and their three young children.